


Deathless

by lea_hazel



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Altered Mental States, Canon-Typical Violence, Daedra, Demigods, Mind Sex, Other, Possession, Skyrim Kink Meme, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-04 23:33:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4157157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/pseuds/lea_hazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So there was a prompt of the Skyrim kink meme for a Daedric Prince using sex to talk the Dragonborn out of becoming champion to another Daedric Prince. I made an offhand comment with the least likely candidate I could think of, and things sort of snowballed from there. </p><p>Content warning for "weird Baltar-esque brain sex" as I phrased it in the comments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deathless

Fin was in Falkreath the first time it happened. He had just accepted what he'd thought was a wonderfully simple favor on behalf of the local blacksmith, and was looking forward to receiving rewards and gratitude for a trivial job well-done. Over the past two weeks he'd been in mortal danger near-constantly, or so it seemed. It was gratifying to take up a task that could in no way end in his death.  
  
Ten paces outside the town's western gate he stopped on his heel. Turning back, he gazed at the stone walls and wondered whether he might not feel safer within than without them. Not one to shrug off a healthy instinct, Fin decided to trust his gut and turn back around. Faintly he heard what sounded like a dog's whining, and almost decided to head down the path regardless, but he shook his head and laughed it off.  
  
Dark fell and the town's few shops closed one by one. Falkreath had few attractions other than its vast graveyard, which Fin had no intention of visiting after dark. Not that he was superstitious. Only, it was too strange. He had two options to entertain himself with: he could either sit at the tavern, get drunk, and trade boasts with some of the locals, or he could get himself into some kind of mischief.  
  
Despite his generally law-abiding temperament he still boasted a few dubious skills, which he used in this instance to quietly let himself into the guards' barracks. Such a small hamlet had no dungeon to speak of, and the cells were rarely occupied by more than the local incorrigible drunk. Still, there was some amusement to be found in picking all the locks and leaving every empty cell's door wide open for the dawn watch to discover.  
  
He was just tinkering with an aged wooden chest when he was startled to hear a human voice. But wait, hadn't he heard something about a little girl being murdered? Cautiously, he approached a barred door that led to a dank, sunken stone cell.  
  
That was when  _she_  showed up.  
  
"FINNEGAN QUISELEY." A familiar voice, with its familiar booming echo, far too large for such a small and simple room. "CHAMPION OF MERIDIA. LEAVE THIS PLACE. TURN YOUR BACK AND AVERT YOUR GAZE FROM THE SERVANT OF HIRCINE AND HIS UNCLEAN MACHINATIONS."  
  
Oh, bother.  
  
Fin turned about himself in a full circle, seeking the source of the voice. There was no physical presence, not even a big glowing ball of light. Still, the voice of the Daedric lord reverberated through the air palpably. It could not be ignored.  
  
"All this for a lousy sword?" he said to himself. "A lousy flaming sword, but still."  
  
The man in the cell blinked at him. "Who are you talking to?"  
  
"Oh, hush, you," said Fin distractedly.  
  
Deciding the faithless follower of Hircine was not worth the trouble, he turned and made his way back out into the town proper. He'd known, in abstract, that dealing with Daedra was not without risks, but somehow this wasn't quite what he'd imagined. The dark, echoing voice was quiet now, seemingly satisfied with his decision to abandon the cursed werewolf to his fate. Maybe, he thought optimistically to himself, that would be the end of it. 

It was not. 

***

A week later, he was back in Whiterun where he'd started out. A nice, quiet town, to his mind, where is was difficult to get into trouble. Even for someone like himself who, as he was learning, was simply a lodestone for trouble of any kind. But Fin had turned his life around and he meant to keep it mended this time. The Jarl had made him Thane in gratitude for his service to Whiterun Hold, and he was seriously considering joining the Companions. An honorable path, every single guard in the city assured him.  
  
Like every tavern he'd ever been to, the Bannered Mare was usually humming with good-natured gossip. He picked up a few unlikely rumors from Hulda and made note of them before he settled in for the night, vowing to rise early and make his way to Jorrvaskr at first light. If this was going to be a new beginning for him, he wanted to make the best possible first impression.  
  
The Companions welcomed him with mostly good cheer, and he left with a good feeling and a mission to complete. Before he left Whiterun, though, he needed to follow up on some of those rumors he'd been gathering. Slaying the dragon at the western tower had already put him in the Jarl's good graces, and so he elected to climb the stairs to Dragonsreach and see if he could solve one more problem for him.  
  
It didn't even need any fighting. Fin was glad of any problem he could talk his way out of, and this seemed to be just such one. A grumpy boy in a castle with too many secrets was the kind of problem he excelled at solving. When he made his way through the servants' quarters he had to stop himself from whistling and twirling the keyring around his finger.  
  
The key clinked softly when he fitted it into the lock. And a vast voice filled his ears as though emanating from inside his skull.  
  
"CHAMPION OF MERIDIA. DO NOT SUCCUMB TO THE SCHEMES AND INTRIGUES OF THIS CRAVEN ARTIFICER. RELIEVE YOUR HAND FROM THE DOOR AND THE WICKEDNESS IT HIDES."  
  
"Oh, bother." He'd really been looking forward to getting some sort of reward for his troubles. He guessed he wasn't quite that honorable, just yet.  
  
The sonorous cry of the Daedric lord continued pulsing in his head as he left the whispering door behind and climbed down the many steps to the Gildergreen square, lessening with every step. When he spoke with the priestess of Kynareth, it was no louder than a bad headache. By the time he reached Jorrvaskr -- and the rowdy whelps who cheerfully invited him to share a drink -- it was almost gone. And Fin dared to think that perhaps he could have a short reprieve from his newest traveling companion. 

***

Joining the Companions was probably the best decision of his life. In only a few days, they'd shown him more welcome than anyone else in Whiterun. He'd walked in a near-stranger and immediately been given a chance to prove himself worthy and a warm, dry bed. It was hard to say which he appreciated more. It didn't hurt that they were offering a shot at a steady income. 

When he finished his first task, he returned for more work. As soon as the word 'honor' dropped from Skjor's mouth, Fin knew exactly what he had to do. He barely paused to rest and eat before finding Farkas and dragging him along to the X marked on his map, walking at his most break-neck speed. 

Things were going well. He didn't scream when corpses started rising from their coffins, or embarrass himself in any other way. Adventuring with the Companions was much pleasanter than wandering the world on his own, not to mention safer. He could see himself staying with them for a long, long time. Maybe even joining the inner circle, once he'd had time enough to prove himself. 

Naturally, when things went wrong, they did explosively so. 

Trapped behind a grate, Fin gripped the bars with both hands until his knuckles whitened. His breath knocked out of his body as though he'd been punched in the belly. Out in the main chamber, Farkas was throwing men around as though they weighed nothing. A woman in fur armor went flying and hit the stone floor with a sickening crunching sound. With all his enemies felled, the werewolf stalked out of the room. He heard a creak and a hiss and then the gate that had slammed down on him slowly opened. 

The gate stilled but he could still hear that high-pitched hissing sound. It rose and rose in volume until he thought his head would burst with it, or perhaps he would start bleeding from the eyes. Just as the pain was reaching unbearable levels the sound receded and resolved into a bright white flaming light.   
  
"Oh, bother."   
  
Farkas stalked back into the room, human again, in time to see the spectacle.   
  
The light of the Daedra rounded on him, fixing him with a brilliant glare.   
  
"WEREWOLF. LEAVE THIS PLACE. THE FOLLOWERS OF MERIDIA SHALL HAVE NO TRUCK WITH YOU AND YOURS."   
  
A sound like a whine escaped his throat before he turned tail and loped right back out of the barrow.   
  
"YOU."   
  
"Yes," said Fin tiredly, ineffectually shielding his smarting eyes with one open palm.   
  
"CEASE THIS FOOLISHNESS AT ONCE. IT IS BENEATH YOU TO CONSORT WITH SUCH FORCES OF CORRUPTION."   
  
"Yes, my lady."   
  
But the voice, the light, the presence was already gone.   
  
The headache, however, persisted for a full week. 

***

Fin watched the strange woman walk away through the gloom of the crypt. 

"I only wanted to help," he said plaintively. "He's a priest of Arkay! It's a good cause."   
  
"NEVER YOU MIND," throbbed the voice of Meridia in his head. The Daedra, it seemed, had not yet discovered the concept of an indoor voice.   
  
There was a short silence.   
  
"Is it true what she said?" he asked. "About... you know."   
  
"IT IS A FAITHLESS LIE," said the voice of Meridia, bouncing off the inside of his skull. "YOU HAVE NEVER CONSUMED THE FLESH OF ANOTHER HUMAN, I ASSURE YOU."   
  
Well, that was a relief.   
  
"Well," said Fin, "I'd better go tell that priest that the Hall of the Dead is safe, now. The sooner the better. This place creeps me out." And he shuddered, as if to punctuate the statement.   
  
The voice of Meridia was silent. Perhaps the Daedra had lost interest, once she was certain her servant was still exclusively her own.   
  
As he had no interest in involving himself in local politics, Fin figured his business in Markarth was just about done. He could return to Whiterun, were it not for the fatal embarrassment involved in seeing Farkas -- or any of the Companions, really -- again. He wondered if he would ever feel comfortable going back there, and sighed. He really did like the city very much. It would be tragic if he ended up avoiding it indefinitely.   
  
Solitude was full of Imperial soldiers and Windhelm was deathly dull. Riften was the only other major city in Skyrim, and he had promised himself he would stay away from that city and all it represented. What was left for him to do, other than wander the Skyrim countryside in search of tombs to explore, he didn't know. All he'd been looking for was something worthwhile to do with his life.   
  
As he walked despondently through the darkening streets of Markarth, ignoring the guards who cast him curious or hostile glances, he was suddenly aware of a disturbance. It was just down the street from him, and Fin decided tentatively that there would be no harm in checking it out. Maybe he could be of use, after all.   
  
As he drew closer, Fin realized that the man in the center of the commotion was a Vigilant of Stendarr. Before he could overcome his instinctual aversion to authority figures of any kind long enough to ask someone what the fuss was, the Vigilant approached him of his own accord. He remembered the tavern keeper had mentioned something about the priesthood of Stendarr raising a ruckus about something or another. Did he really want to get involved with them? Especially as he was still carrying Dawnbreaker. No one had commented on it yet, but a Vigilant would surely be more attentive to such thing than a typical Hold guard, however nosy they tended to be.   
  
"I'm with the Vigil of Stendarr. We believe this house might have been used for Daedra worship. Evil rites and so forth."   
  
"STOP."   
  
"Yes, Mistress," said Fin irritably through his relapsing headache, "I  _know_  your rites are nothing like that."   
  
"FINNEGAN. THIS PLACE IS UNCLEAN. I SENSE A DARK PRESENCE."   
  
"Well, then," he said reasonably, "shouldn't I un-unclean it?"   
  
"THAT WOULD JUST BE CLEANING. AND NO."   
  
Fin exhaled with an audible puff.   
  
"A SHRINE OF MOLAG BAL RESIDES HERE. YOU MUST NOT SPEAK WITH, NOR LISTEN TO HIS FOUL LIES."   
  
"I think I am smart enough not to fall for that sort of trap!" he said indignantly.   
  
The voice of the headache that trampled through his skull took on a visible form, an eye-smarting shimmering distortion of the air before him, which eventually resolved into a shape more or less human-like in appearance. And this form reached out, and laid its hand flat on the center of his chest. He knew a searing pain then, as though his very skin screamed to be let go. He shut his eyes tight against the light, but it did no good.   
  
"FINNEGAN. CHAMPION. I WILL SHOW YOU WHAT BEFALLS A SERVANT OF MERIDIA."   
  
Fin felt a current like lightning jolt through him. He shuddered violently, his blood pounding. He'd never been so terrified in his life, counting the three or four times a dragon specifically sought him out to attack him. Nor, he realized after an impossibly long moment had stretched by, had he ever felt so aroused. That one was new. 

His skin burned. It felt as though jabbed with a thousand needles. His vision went white, then black. Through the pounding of his own heart he could hear the goddess still talking, but not make out her words. Gradually the pain receded. Fin blinked, expecting the street and the city to resolve back around him. He'd been punished, hadn't he? He'd learned his lesson. Stay away from Daedric shrines, priests of the Divines, Vigilants of Stendarr, ominously closed doors of unoccupied houses. Houses rather like the sort he used to squat in as a child.   
  
"I am not done with you, Finnegan," said the goddess, and in the blankness of the space he was occupying, her voice no longer sounded impossibly, blood-curdlingly loud.   
  
He wheezed. "What more could you possibly want? I said I would stay away from Molag Bal, and the Vigiliants."   
  
He had, in fact, not said that, but he had thought it, which he was pretty sure the goddess would know.   
  
"As I said, mortal," said Meridia. "You are here to receive a reward that befits my champion."   
  
... _reward_?   
  
Before he had time to dwell on their differing definitions of punishment and reward, he felt the by-now-familiar burning sensation snaking over his skin, starting at his fingertips and slowly crawling up his arms. Back, too, was the inexplicable feeling of arousal. Fin had been in more than one life-threatening situation in his life, or even this week. He was very familiar with the mixed sensation of thrill and relief that followed, and how easily the pounding heart and boiling blood could be mistaken for something other than mortal terror.   
  
This was somehow the same, somehow different. Like the presence of the goddess in his mind wasn't truly a sound that could be heard by anyone but him, but it still made his head hurt and his ears ring. That presence, now, was pulling him farther and farther into the strange liminal space she occupied when she was speaking to him. His head -- and his body -- were doing all sorts of funny things in response.   
  
He stopped and tried to breathe deeply, to figure out whether he was really hard or if it was somehow in his imagination. But to do that he would have to locate the physical presence of his body, which he didn't think he could do at this point. Not that his body wasn't thrilled to keep sending jolts of sensation to his mind, but he had no idea where and when they were coming from. And the feelings he was flooded with, though not unpleasant, were as unlike sex as anything he could imagine.   
  
"What are you doing?" he tried to ask.   
  
A murmur grew in the back of his mind, finally resolving into a laugh. "I am rewarding my champion for his loyalty."   
  
"Oh." The word felt odd and hollow. "Why?"   
  
"I wanted you to know that your dealings with me need not be limited to reprimands and restrictions. Carrying the word of Meridia in Mundus is not without its... benefits."   
  
"So." He struggled to wrap his mind around the idea. "This is you... giving me a prize... for carrying your sword and killing your enemies?"   
  
" _My_  champion," said the goddess. "Mine and no one else's."   
  
Gods and mortals, it transpired, were not as different as they first seemed.   
  
"Well then," said Fin, his voice oddly croaking, "I suppose I accept."   
  
"Good." The voice in his head sounded now more like the idea of a smile. "Now... just relax."   
  
A thought came to his head and was immediately pushed back out, something about protesting that  _that was his line_. Gone was the scorching feeling crawling over his skin. Instead he felt an impossible pressure, like a scream building up inside his every muscle, pushing against his skin from the inside, straining to get free. It was as though his whole body was tying itself into progressively tighter knots, twisted like a corkscrew and wound too tight to be pried loose. For a brief eternity he hung suspended in that liminal hollow between mind and body before the knot was cut and he plummeted back to reality. 

Next thing he knew, he was sprawled face-first in the dirt. The gut-wrenching drop had kicked the breath from his lungs and when he tried to push himself up, his arms wobbled like jelly. His skin was damp and when he tried to blink against the daylight he found that his eyes were watering.   
  
A shadow fell over him. "Are you... all right?"   
  
_Oh, Mara's mercy_ , he started to think before hastily pushing it down.   
  
He struggled to his feet. Whoever owned the worried voice and the shadow that fell over him didn't step forward to lend a hand. "I'm--" he started, and coughed to clear his throat. "I'm fine."   
  
A guard in Markarth colors and the barmaid from the tavern were standing by the Vigilant, all of them staring at him with obvious apprehension.   
  
"Seizure," he said hastily. "My grandmother used to have them. Got to go!"   
  
And he picked up his scattered belongings from the ground and bolted towards the city gates. He needed to go someplace where no one would recognize him, have a few stiff drinks, and ponder whether he was still fit for human company. Softly, at the very back of his mind, he heard an almost gentle laugh. 


End file.
